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When you fall in love a lot of what attracts you to your beloved are matching beliefs, wounds and behaviors. They feel familiar. Will you continue repeating generational and personal patterns, or choose to change them?

The terms of your soul agreement are established in the early stages of courting. Some may even be in place from past lives your souls shared. Over time these agreements evolve through changes in commitment, communication and behaviors.

Yet some aspects of your soul agreement are operating based on old beliefs, wounds or past life unresolved experiences that brought you together.

For example one partner comes to the relationship with a family belief that prosperity requires stress, effort and hard work to obtain and maintain. This survival level wound has him working long hours to provide a lifestyle that he doesn’t get to enjoy, while resentment builds for his wife who seems to get all the benefits and doesn’t seem to be working as hard.

His wife has a matching wound. It is a wound to her personal power. She believes she will be punished if she exerts her power to manifest prosperity. As a child she was repeatedly reprimanded by her mother for using her power to get what she wanted. So she has chosen a career that doesn’t allow her to express her power.

When she takes steps to heal that wound she decides to make a career change to feel more empowered. Her husband encourages her. Yet because he believes that it is hard to generate prosperity, he influences her to take a job that is hard for her. It doesn’t fit her nature and she continues to feel disempowered.

On the surface it looks like they are working together to support the change in their soul agreement around prosperity but unconsciously the old pattern is still playing out. Until their matching soul level wounds and beliefs are released, the pattern will keep rearing its head in different forms in their relationship. Keeping them stuck in the lack of true prosperity and creating tension.

As your relationship with your beloved grows, your beliefs and old wounds have an opportunity to shift. Your soul agreement needs to be updated along the way. You came together for a purpose. The connection needs a renewed purpose to thrive. When you ask to see, heal and shift outdated aspects of your soul agreement you create new purpose to thrive in love and partnership.

I offer couple’s soul agreement readings with both partners present. It takes an immense courage for two people to look directly at their relationship agreement. It is a very powerful soul freeing evolutionary step.

There are junctures in life, transitions that are a natural part of development or made by choice, that indicate a soul agreement change is an order. A parent-child relationship evolves to parent-adult, when the child grows up. Commitments made in a marriage end at the death of one partner or with a divorce. As I covered in an earlier blog post, the soul agreement goes beyond the psychological shift and change of physical circumstance.

In cases where there isn’t a clear relationship transition, it’s not as obvious that an update is in order. In a marriage of 30 years the agreement isn’t the same as it was at 5 years of marriage, yet aspects can be stuck in the original agreement. Here are a few clues to help you identify where you can benefit from changing your soul agreements.

When you repeatedly think about a past experience or have a mental conversation with a person who is not present. This is a person or situation with which you need to update your agreement. The conversation in your head kicks-in frequently when you relax and are not focused on a task. And sometimes it even disrupts something else you were thinking about or doing.

If you feel frustrated, dis-empowered or “off” from the persistent distracting thoughts, you might find yourself pushing the person away in your mind saying, “Leave me alone!” The disruption has purpose. It’s happening to let you know something is unresolved, that you need to release, shift or directly communicate in a relationship.

Another way you can know a relationship soul agreement needs to be updated is when you feel angry about expectations from a person that you don’t want to be required to fulfill. This anger helps you notice that you need to revise your boundary in the agreement. When an agreement is in need of update it often has low vibration emotions attached to it like guilt, shame, abandonment, judgment or control.

For example, you feel guilty for saying “no” to someone when they ask you to do something you’ve always done for them at work, like schedule a meeting for a group of people. Your job has changed and you are no longer in the position where that is part of the agreement. You need to set a new boundary and update your agreement to match the new role so others don’t continue to expect you to do things that were part of your old position.

In another case, you may have an agreement to listen to a friend when they have had a bad experience. They want to dump their pain or anger to feel better. And you’ve signed up through your choice to listen. You may have a sense of guilt for abandoning them in their suffering if you don’t listen. Yet every time you have a conversation where you get emotionally dumped on, you feel worse and your friend feels better. They may even thank you for being a good friend. The benefit of changing or ending an agreement like this is that it allows you to have your own experience, rather than getting thrown “off” or drained by their emotions and upset.

In summary, the primary signals that a relationship soul agreement is ready to be updated:

A relationship has clearly changed (end of job, romantic partnership)

A relationship has changed over time but the person is not honoring the change

A relationship drains your energy

You experience distracting or dis-empowering thoughts of the person

You feel negative emotions about something that used to be okay for you in a relationship

You might think your family didn’t teach you much about your intuition but they did. Whether they taught you to doubt your gut feelings by telling you that you were wrong when you voiced something you sensed but couldn’t prove, or they simply were living examples of listening to their inner-voice; they taught you something.

One way I was taught to tune-in to my intuition by my family was through working with my dad on the ranch. There were always projects to do. The list was never ending with land, livestock, buildings, fences and equipment to keep in order. Dad would often have me and my brother help him when he was working on a project. He did most of the heavy lifting and our job was to keep him in his efficiency-zone by handing him whatever tool he needed next, holding a board in place or plugging in a power tool.

While he taught us how to do things along the way and verbally asked us to hand him the next tool or piece of material he needed early on, over time we were expected to know what he needed next, to read his mind and be one step ahead of him as he worked. This was also the way his dad, our grandfather worked. My brother and I learned to either be savvy enough to know what was next in the project or intuit their next step.

We were experiencing non-verbal communication. As the helpers we tuned-in to what was happening and kept track of the fast pace that activity was moving. We not only were tuned-in to whether a next tool was needed but if it was time to get dad a drink of water.

Practicing awareness of another through observation and intuitively tuning-in to foresee what they may need next was one of the languages of our family. In the full throws of a project if we weren’t tuned-in it could mean someone got hurt or the rhythm or efficiency was broken. It also insured we didn’t get scolded for being lazy and not doing our part.

Reading or empathically feeling others emotions and translating that into what to do for them is one of the tricky areas where we can either be affirmed or taught to doubt ourselves in a family. The nice thing about intuiting the material next steps of a ranch project is that it not as dicey of ground as intuiting someone’s emotions and knowing how to respond.

Our families subtly teach us how to use or disregard our intuition. As we identify some of the ways this occurred in our life, we can use it to reclaim or further hone our intuitive awareness.

I got a call recently from a client who had just received an energy whack from a family member. Her cousin had sent an email that read, “Guess who I ran into?” with a photo of herself squeezing this woman’s ex-love tight. Knowing there was a lingering heartbreak. When my client received the email she felt wobbly, off-center, angry and hurt. She wondered why her cousin would intentionally cause her pain.

Another friend experienced an energy whack last week by having her confidence betrayed. The intention behind her words misconstrued then repeated to others. It brought up feelings of self-doubt. She asked herself, should I trust this person anymore? Why did I even say anything?

An energy whack can come in the form of words (verbal, text or email), direct or indirect actions that wound us. The vibration behind the words is charged with judgment, control, anger, competition and/or punishment. The unconscious agenda of a whack is to throw the receiver off balance, push them away, so the person delivering it can feel more in control of the situation or claim the power position, thus establishing an adjusted boundary.

An energy whack might be rooted in jealousy, harbored resentments, defensiveness, fear of failure or other unconscious psychological sources that have nothing to do with the recipient. When we experience being whacked by someone, it can take us from a perfectly normal state into a state of confusion, anger, distraction or depression. The deepest whacks often come from someone we are closest to. We care more about their perspective and our heart is more open to them, therefore the impact is greater.

To reclaim our sense of balance after being whacked, we need to clear the harmful energy out of our space. This simple visualization helps us reclaim our spiritual seniority:

Imagine a bubble suspended in the air in front of your body.

Notice where you are feeling physical tension from the energy whack you received. Is it in your belly, your throat, your head or somewhere else?

Intend that the energy of the whack you received move out of your aura body into the bubble. You might want to name it by the emotions behind it (control, anger, punishment)

It may move fast or it may be sticky and take a while. You’ll feel when it is complete by a release of the physical tension.

When the bubble is full of all of the whack energy, send it to a faraway place in your mind’s eye and watch it pop.

Then call your energy back to yourself from this person and the situation. See yourself being filled up with the energy of your own essence flowing into the top of your head.

Whacks catch us off guard and can throw is in a tail spin. We’ve all whacked others unconsciously and sometimes we even notice it happening as the words slip out of our mouth, wishing we could take them back. The more we learn to be senior in our energy space the less impact whacks have on us. We can see the root of the energy and be more neutral to it. The more neutral we are the less we get triggered by others toxic energy sent our way.

I was reminded of the power of vulnerability at my book group this month. One woman shared a perceived failure, a self-judged imperfection and we all relaxed more deeply into our Self. The energy of the room opened up and became more connected. We each saw ourselves reflected, in the quiet moments where we are alone with our inner voice. We reached out to comfort the Self we saw in her. We held her with more compassion than we might hold ourselves.

We spend an immense amount of unconscious energy holding up the identity that we feel safe letting others see. The curious thing is that when we share our challenges, the less than shiny aspects of ourselves in healthy relationships, instead of activating the judgment of others, it invites them to love us more. They receive a signal that their own rough edges will be loved too. Suddenly there is new found safety in being a full-spectrum human being.

We all have experiences we count as failures, imperfections, things that don’t turn out the way we’d hoped, relationships, situations that got messy and we mired around in the muck. We weren’t our best. We should have known better, is what we tell ourselves. And we have periods of crisis that feel like about as much as one soul can handle, whether it’s external circumstances or an internal battle that stresses our life to the max.

Yet we still have to show up in our life. We can’t permanently take a vacation from everything and everyone to avoid being seen in the midst of it. The rough spots in the road of life evoke a deep sense of vulnerability. How much do we have to prop-up the Self that is doing “just fine,” or “great,” to the world while struggling in private?

It’s in the poop, the dirty, imperfect parts of our life that we learn the most. It busts us open and helps us grow. The discomfort stretches us. But unless we are a chronic complainer that drains the energy of everyone around with our misery, we generally hide these challenges from most of the world or save them for our closest loved ones. There is a reason for this. Our closest loved ones have established a known level of safety. We can live a richer life by allowing deeper vulnerability with more people in our lives. It literally shifts the energy of every future moment.

Our intuition helps us tune-in to supportive places and relationships in our lives to reveal our challenge. Simply giving a short but honest answer to the stranger who asks, “How are you?” allows them to admit their own full spectrum of emotion to themselves and have a better day with the relief of it… “It’s been a rough day but I’m hanging in.” This isn’t about dumping your shit on others, rather allowing the truth of you to be seen by another in a way that allows you both to relax into the present moment rather than faking it. This is how the poop gets beautiful. It’s the real, the true and the authentic Self revealed. The most beautiful state of existence.

My grandma doesn’t hear very well even with hearing aids, but if she’s tuned-in she knows what’s going on even from the other room. This is especially true if you don’t want her to hear what you are saying! I noticed in a recent visit with her that I’d be thinking of something and she’d come in from the other room and answer my question or suggest we get milk at the grocery store, something I was about to mention. Yet there are certain people in her life, her children in particular, that she has a harder time hearing than the rest of us.

Her physical sense of hearing doesn’t get temporarily worse and she’s demonstrated that where her hearing falls short she can make up for it with her intuition. But like many of us who are challenged by certain relationships in our lives, the unresolved energy between her and her children causes her to resist what they have to say. She can’t hear it and it has nothing to do with the volume, her ability or her intuition. She’s blocked.

We figure out how to navigate our home environment using all six senses, first learning to intuitively read our parents before we understand verbal communication. As adults, when we ask family members to engage in new levels of communication sometimes they just don’t get it and seem to sort of glaze over. This happens in marriage and long-term friendships too.

We try to communicate in many different ways and find that it’s not getting through. Our friend or family member can’t hear us. All approaches to expression fail to get the point across. We might as well be speaking a different language given the lack of understanding or recognition. And we wonder if our intuition is misleading us that something is amiss because our loved one doesn’t validate our experience with acknowledgment. It’s frustrating.

What we are experiencing is a threshold of capacity in the person. While it may seem that it is their choice not to hear us, it is more likely a spiritual or emotional block so deep that they can’t consciously make the choice. We are trying to accomplish the impossible. The only way to get past this block is for the person to have some form of healing breakthrough that opens them up to hearing. It can’t be forced and it will only happen if they seek out the shift for themselves.

When we’ve reached a point where it’s clear that nothing we say will get through. Our best path is to turn our attention inward and begin clearing out the blocks in our own energy field. In mediation, we visualize energy moving out of physical body such as rejection, resistance, judgment, frustration and any sense that we won’t be ok unless this person hears us. The energy can move into a rose or bubble then that object, as seen in our minds-eye is sent to a distant place to dissolve.

After we’ve cleaned out our aura body we feel lighter. To complete the empowerment process we can visualize filling our space in with the sensations of having our needs met in relationship, of being heard, understood and accepted. Then in the physical world, find a place where we can communicate our experience and be heard, acknowledged, even if that is in the privacy of our own journal. We focus on building relationships where we are heard.

It is human nature to want to express our experiences, to be heard, seen and understood. Every form of art is connected to this desire to express. Musicians, painters, actors, writers, movie makers are all giving voice to an aspect of their experience in a creative way, exploring their light or shadow with words, role play, stories, color and sound. The act of expression in-and-of-itself provides a sense of relief and comfort. Without an audience we can express and still feel energy has been moved through writing in a journal or singing alone in the car. It allows us to find peace or at least a feeling of forward movement.

The throat chakra is where we carry the energy of communication and expression. Our relationship with expression can be hindered and altered due to the responses we receive from others and how we interpret them. Our sixth sense intuitive awareness may have led us to express things as children that were outside of the comfort zone of adults. We noticed an unspoken truth that the adults around us didn’t want to acknowledge and spoke up. The response ranged from invalidation (being told we’re wrong) to punishment.

Through the experience of others discomfort with our expression we learn to control it, shut it down or present it in terms easier for people to handle. If we grow up only getting attention for negative behavior we may learn to use our expression to intentionally make people uncomfortable. This can result in self-sabotage, conflict and attracts negative energy from others.

Artistic expression is where we are granted permission to show the full spectrum of human experience from beauty to pain, without being directly judged. A song about heartbreak, a painting that draws out the beauty of our environment, a poem that mysteriously hints at secrets one wouldn’t speak out loud, we accept and applaud. Yet if the artist takes their conversation out of the art form and to the dinner table of life we suddenly become uncomfortable with the raw truth.

To get beyond the socially acceptable framework of art as a forum to express our full-spectrum of intuitive awareness, we have to revisit old wounds and remove the rules that were programmed into our behavior before we were conscious of our free will. This means noticing when our throat or belly gets tight as a signal from our higher Self that we are holding onto something that may need to be to expressed.

As we notice these beliefs and automatic responses in our body and behaviors that aren’t in alignment, we can have an internal conversation with the information. Ask our self, “What do I want to do as an adult with this awareness in this situation?” It may be enough to acknowledge that we need to physically leave, or we may notice it’s necessary for us to directly address some unspoken aspect between us and another person. The more neutral and non-judging we can be in expression of our experience, the more powerfully it lands.

The power of our intuitive awareness is not in the knowing but in how it impacts our life. When we pay attention to our inner-signals and speak up with those who we trust our inner-guidance has purpose. We’ve all said in retrospect, “I had a feeling that person wasn’t trust worthy” but if we had communicated our awareness to a third party we trusted for reflection, it may have protected us from some harm. Expressing our awareness gives our consciousness a place to land and mull over the insight. Expression allows the flow of energy generated in a given situation to continue uninhibited without getting bottled up or stuck. It grounds our relationships in the present moment.

My desire for a spot close to the front of the airplane had me sit in a middle seat between two women on a fight home to Denver last week. Expecting the usual, ignore the stranger next to you, behavior of business travel, I was surprised to immediately be in conversation with the woman sitting to my right. I can’t even remember how the conversation started but it didn’t pause until we landed two hours later. By then I had heard 72 years of stories, Naomi’s life in a nutshell, and more importantly witnessed her joyful perspective on life.

Her vibrant energy created a shift in me, revitalizing my sense of appreciation and possibility. Inviting me to match the level of joy she lives in. If I blur the lens of the words that passed between us, the pure vitality Naomi offered through her positive perspective was transformational.

Each of us radiates energy that is a combination of our natural essence, our beliefs and energies we’ve held onto that we’ve accumulated along the way. Often we don’t notice our own energy, what we are presenting as a vibration to the world. When our energy is clear of fearful beliefs more
of our natural essence shines and we attract energy that matches what we want in our lives. In order to experience the spark of inspiration that generates transformation we have to be available to human connection.

The most powerful insights can come from the perspectives of strangers. They have a fresh perspective, one we haven’t been exposed to before. They don’t know our history and we are inclined to listen more closely to someone we just met. Our awareness is heightened.

The type of connection I experienced with Naomi was wonderfully unexpected. We can prepare ourselves to recognize these opportunities and be open to the transformational energy that is available through connection. We prepare by taking time to align our vibration with our essence. Start in a meditative space:

Send a psychic “hello” to your essence, your soul, your authentic Self. Allow your inner voice to ask if there are beliefs that are pulling you out of alignment with your essence?

Visualize those fears, disturbances and non-aligned energies moving out of your space into a bubble. Watch the bubble float to a distant mountain top and pop, transforming the energy into a new form. This makes more room for your own essence to expand. You may want to repeat this with several different focus areas in your life. Where you are showing up with a certain identity, such as work, romantic relationship, friendship, health or creative practice.

Imagine a big golden ball of light hovering above your head. In the center of that ball is a magnet calling your energy back to you from any places you have left it that you are ready to retrieve it from. Once the golden ball of light is full of your essence, in your minds-eye reach up and pop it. See the energy of your essence flow down into you, filling in all the space that was opened when you moved out the non-aligned vibrations.

We naturally attract matching vibrations into our lives. Sometimes we have the fortune of attracting a connection that wakes us up and elevates us to a new level of self-awareness. I believe this happens when the person we encounter can see past our current state and notices our soul’s essence. The practice of consciously setting our energy invites connections that are transformational.

The closer we are to a person the more we assume they will interpret and respond to our needs and desires without verbal communication. It’s tempting to try to intuitively read other’s needs to reduce conflict in relationships but in doing so we enter hazardous territory.

Our first point of reference in any situation is how we would feel or experience it. That is the root of why people expect others to know how they feel. Those of us who are naturally intuitive first experienced reading others feelings and needs empathically (second chakra). When we empathically read there’s a tendency to match the emotion which alters our clarity.

As we evolve our intuitive skills to a point of better boundaries, we move out of feeling a person and matching the energy, into a space of seeing (sixth chakra). When seeing rather than feeling we are in a stronger position to provide support, if it is welcomed by the person in need.

Another hazard of reading someone’s needs and responding, rather than asking for direct communication, is identifying the source of truth we are seeing. Each human has four need centers:

body

mind (conscious or subconscious)

emotion/heart

soul/spirit

These aspects of Self are not always in agreement. Our need centers perceive their yes/no with different priorities and filters. The body may determine rest is the top priority while the mind and emotions override it with an agenda that they perceive is more important to complete before rest is allowed. When we try to gauge this priority for someone else and respond to what we see, we come across as controlling rather than supporting what they know to be true for themselves.

In addition, when we read others without their permission, even if it is from a place of wanting to help, we are intruding on their psychic space. That intrusion whether consciously noticed or not, creates discomfort for the person we are reading. They feel outside energy in their space and find it harder to get clear on their own needs. They push back actively or passively to try to regain a sense of stability for themselves.

People we care about may insinuate they want us to read their minds or know what they need without us asking them, but when we do there are many potential land mines to navigate. Our best course of action is to communicate more than necessary when we sense someone needs something from us before we act. And stay focused on keeping a clear awareness of our own needs so we can communicate them to those who support us.

The January 2011 issue of Discover magazine presented results of research by neuroscientist Lauren Silbert that proved we can get inside someone’s head when they are communicating with us. Her study scanned brain activity determining that “among the most attentive listeners, key brain regions lit up before her words even came out, suggesting anticipation of what she would say next. ‘The more you anticipate someone, the more you’re able to enter their space.’ Siblert says.” Research now proves what psychics have long known to be true, as we engage with the people in our life, subconsciously we are communicating with non-verbal or spiritual energy mind-to-mind. As we hone our intuitive awareness we want to clearly hear our inner-guidance, therefore it is important that our center-of-head space is free from outside influences.

The better we identify and remove the distortions of perception based on other people’s influence in our energy field, the greater clarity we gain. This starts by owning our sixth chakra, the center of head space. The sixth chakra is where our intuition and analytical mind reside. As science confirms, it’s normal for people to get in each other’s space through this chakra since it is the telepathic communication channel. If a person pops-up in your mind unexpectedly, you can be sure they have energy in your space. It is a subconscious way for the person to feel they have some insight into what might come next in the relationship by reading the other person.

As part of the foundational meditation taught in psychic training we start every class with grounding our energy and cleaning out our sixth chakra. There are a lot of fun ways to do this, all are forms of visualization. With your eyes closed try one of these exercises. Follow-up by filling-in that same space with your own energy:

See that center-of-head being sprayed clean with a fire hose

Watch everything that is not your energy get blown away by a high-powered fan

Put a slide at the edge and imaging all the energy that is not yours sliding down and out

Visualize a bubble outside of your aura collecting up all the energy that is not you, then send that bubble somewhere far away and pop-it.

Through regularly cleaning out any energy in your center-of-head space that is not you and replacing that with your own vibration, you are able to more easily access your inner-guidance and trust it.

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